April 4, 2003

MS Digital Movie Distribution Microsoft has released a paper describing the system by which Landmark Theatres will use Windows Media Series 9 technology to display movies in digital format across many of its screens. The system developed will use mainly HIGHlite 6000Dsx digital projectors, which have a maximum resolution of 1280 pixels by 720 pixels and cost $57,995. One site will use the Thunder 10000Dsx, which has a greater luminance and resolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels and a cost of $86,995. These projectors which use Texas Instruments Digital Light Processing (DLP) chips as the image source are in fact cheaper than other DLP projectors due to their lesser light outputs and resolution. With the relatively low-resolution Microsoft claims that a full-length movie can be compressed to 4 to 6 GB with Windows Media Series 9 technology compared to the 40 to 50 GB of space needed if MPEG-2 was used. For playing the movies, Microsoft states that a custom video player application under Windows XP Professional will be used since the user interface of Windows Media player would be visible on screen and get in the way. Overall  the low resolution of the movies looks problematic but Microsoft notes that if better projectors are used the rest of the system can handle the improved output resolutions. 10:05:13 PM

Some people claim that CNN knew the war was going to start on March 19th. 12:07:46 AM